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Ryan Lee, who was Assistant Chief of Portland Police before becoming the Chief in Boise, Idaho, resigned in September over an incident in which he injured a police sergeant while demonstrating a choke hold for other officers. A prosecutor working on the case said Boise officers told them Lee would "brag about the number of hands-on force events he engaged in" when he was in Portland (BoiseDev, September 1). This is a prime example of why Portland Copwatch will sometimes praise an officer's specific behaviors but not then trust them implicitly; Ryan had blown the whistle on the coverup when off-duty officers beat up civilians outside a downtown club in 2002 (PPR #27).
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In October, news came out that the Department of Homeland Security had created "baseball cards" about Portland protestors including "personal interests and the names of their friends and family based on scans of their social media profiles" (Oregonian, October 28). The feds say that one person, acting Under Secretary of Intelligence Brian Murphy, was responsible for this intrusion on people's rights and say that he bullied his underlings to collect the data on what he called "violent Antifa anarchists inspired" individuals. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden disclosed the information; however, it is not clear whether anyone is going to be held accountable or even if all of the files were purged.
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As the PPR was going to press, news broke that Sgt. Darke Hull (#37765) was arrested while off duty in Washington County for "allegedly grabbing a woman's groin and pulling her hair at a County sports bar" (Oregonlive, December 15). The incident occurred in late October but the PPB only released information a month later when the criminal charges were formally filed.
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In 2020, the Portland Public School Board decided to discontinue the School Resource Officer (SRO) program after growing attention and concern over police misconduct, discrimination, over- policing, and the school-to-prison pipeline. With the recent increase in shootings near schools, the police have taken the opportunity to begin campaigning to re-introduce SROs. They will be hosting community forums at various schools starting in January 2023.

In a December 16 interview on KOIN-TV6, Police Association President Sgt. Aaron Schmautz said the job of SROs was to "divert kiddos from the criminal justice system." Replying to concern that the SRO program was discriminatory, Schmautz claimed, "there was no actual evidence that we were engaging in any kind of biased-based policing, in fact there was evidence to the opposite."

This is easily disproven. There have been many studies about SROs and time after time they show the effect of cops in schools is that Black, Indigenous, Latinx, LGBTQ+, and students with disabilities are more often swept into the criminal justice system when SROs are present in those schools. Such data were verified in a 2021 study of California schools by the ACLU.

January, 2023
Also in PPR #88

Portland Copwatch
PO Box 42456
Portland, OR 97242
(503) 236-3065/ Incident Report Line (503) 321-5120
e-mail: copwatch@portlandcopwatch.org

Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.

People's Police Report #88 Table of Contents
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